


Dream in Red

by matadelanimasola



Series: I Dreamed of a Red River [1]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Gun Violence, Unplanned Pregnancy, canon typical depictions of violence, experiments in cabin fever, inappropriate management of post-traumatic stress, pre-game, shades of lima syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-05-28 03:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matadelanimasola/pseuds/matadelanimasola
Summary: Rachel Salazar never expected anything too crazy to happen at work. She dealt with the occasional irate land owner and running into wildlife (bears, snakes, wolves, oh my) on a survey. Sometimes even hunters with rifles who were angry that she scared off their game. It was all part of the job. What wasn't part of the job was getting shot, and then spending the next seven months trapped in a cabin with a man her instincts told her she should be very afraid of. And yet, there she was, completely dependent on a man called Jacob with the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. It was going to be an interesting winter, one way or another.





	1. A Bad Day at Work

     The day began normally enough. Drive to the project area, sit in the nice, warm truck for an extra five minutes (to finish their coffee, of course; can’t let it get cold), then strap on the snowshoes and start moving. Rachel liked this part of the job. Kimberly, not so much, which was vaguely contradictory considering she had grown up in the mountains. It had been an unusually cold fall, though, with almost a foot of snow on the ground already by mid-September. A little snow wasn’t enough to call off the job, however, but it did make things moderately annoying. Too much snow to get the truck up the narrow, winding road to the cabin they were supposed to evaluate, but too little snow to bring out a sled.

    So, snowshoes it was.

    The hike up to the house was nice enough. The temperature hovered somewhere in the teens and Rachel, at least, was glad of it. Cold enough not to sweat while the pair was moving, but not yet cold enough that she was concerned about being out too long. It was a scenic place, a small log cabin set back off a clearing on a stream that would burble charmingly when it wasn’t frozen solid. The cabin had seen better days, that was for sure. Holes in the chinking whistled slightly when the wind blew just right and some previous tenant had fixed plywood over a broken window.

    “Anyone home?” Rachel called, knocking firmly on the door with her gloved fist. No response came, so she turned to Kim and said, “Let’s get started. Keep an ear out, though; looks like someone might still live here.”

    Kim nodded from within her many layers of scarves and hats, and the two women set to work. It wasn’t hard work, assessing the structure, but frost sapping the batteries in the camera had them both working quickly. Rachel called out measurements and descriptions to her colleague, noting the unusual gambrel roof that would have been more at home on a barn than a cabin and the eyebrow dormers that were more Federalist than rustic. The whole structure was the kind of folk architecture so typical of Montana that Rachel had fallen so deeply in love with in her grad school days.

    “Rach,” Kim said quietly, nodding at the treeline over her boss’ shoulder. A figure cut through the drifted snow, rifle in hand and moving fast. Rachel pulled her scarf down off her face, a disarming smile plastered across her lips. Before she could even speak, the person stopped no more than twenty feet away from them and raised the weapon.

    “What the _hell’re_ you doing on my property?” the man growled, menace in his tone.

    Rachel and Kim very carefully made no sudden moves. It wasn’t the first time an angry tenant had pulled a firearm on them and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. That didn’t mean they weren’t scared shitless, though, and the smile on Rachel’s face wavered despite her very best efforts. The rifle he was pointing at them was no peashooter .22 and the way he held it told her he knew exactly what he was doing. A .45-70 was what she carried, too, and she deliberately did not look at her pack to see just how far away her own rifle was sitting.

    “I’m Rachel Salazar, this is Kimberly Kulevsky. We contract for Kathy Hunter, the land abstractor out of Fall’s End?” The man didn’t react, so Rachel continued. “We’re doing the architectural consult, assessing the structure’s value before the land is sold–”

    The man flew into a rage at that.

    “This land is not for sale!” he screamed, spit flying from his lips and freezing in the cold air as it fell. “Those Seeds can eat my shit!”

    Rachel and Kim flinched back as he jabbed the rifle sharply in their direction. There was a detached part of her brain that bemoaned how often landowners neglected to inform their tenants of surveyors being on the property, and how this whole situation might have been avoided. But then the man was back to screaming and Rachel was back to barely even breathing for fear of setting him off even further.

    “Get the fuck off my land!” His tirade ended with that, his chest heaving and breath misting in the air. The women were only too happy to comply. Rachel slowly (ever so painfully slowly) waved her hand at Kim to grab her pack and get the hell out of Dodge. Leave the snowshoes, just hoof it. Equipment was easier to replace than a person.

    When Rachel herself made it to her pack, backing up slowly the whole way, she made a critical mistake. Kim was already into the treeline when Rachel bent to pick up her pack, revealing her own rifle. A deafening crack split the air and all the breath was knocked from Rachel’s lungs. Distantly, she realized what had happened, even though the pain had yet to register.

     _Forget the bag_ , her mind supplied. Another crack, louder almost than the first, echoed inside her ears. So, Rachel ditched her bag and ran for the trees. Kim had already bolted, no sign of her offensively green parka against the brown and white of the forest. It seemed to Rachel that there were no footprints to follow, either, though the rational part of her brain that stayed calm through the panic told her that she had missed their path when she darted between trunks for cover.

    Adrenaline and blind panic beat with her pulse in her throat, bullets cracking off bark as she fled. As though on another plane of existence, she hoped desperately that Kim would keep her head and be able to find her way back to the truck and to safety. Rachel knew there would be no such luck for her. She ran until her breath froze in her lungs and she coughed red onto the snow. She couldn’t stop, but couldn’t continue on.

    Snow dragged at her feet, pulling her back to that awful clearing it felt like. She stumbled once, twice. Fell, then caught herself on a tree. Tried to pull herself up again, but couldn’t quite manage it. One of her arms was all but useless, but she was having a hard time figuring out which it was. Odd, that. Odd, too, how she found herself face down in the snow when she should still have been running. Odder still that she was so warm, warm enough to take her jacket off to cool down.

     _Paradoxical undressing_ , that ever-rational voice supplied.  _Hypothermia plus massive blood loss. Do something about it, don’t just sit there_.

    So she did.

    In a haze that felt very much like the only time she had been well and truly drunk, Rachel plucked at the laces of her boots and stripped her socks off. They were thick, woollen, and, she had determined, the best thing to use as makeshift gauze pads.

    The bullets had been small going in, but large going out.

    Her gloves met the same fate, haphazardly tied in place with her scarf before all that moving caught up with her and she slumped back against the tree. Just a few minutes to rest, Rachel told herself. Gotta get my wind back, then keep moving. She told herself that, but gravity seemed to increase exponentially in that one spot and her eyes slowly slid closed. The snow was cold against her bare fingers and toes, but the thought of shoving her feet back into her boots seemed impossibly daunting.

    She would just rest for a moment. Just for a bit. (Tears froze in their tracks where they dripped down the side of her face.) Her lungs ached and she coughed weakly. Kim, she hoped, had gone for help. There was no way, she knew, that she was getting out of the forest on her own. Rachel blinked furiously and deliberately dug her fingers into the hole above her liver, a last-ditch effort to keep herself awake for that much longer. She didn’t need the little rational voice to tell her that if she went to sleep now, she wouldn’t wake up again.

    The rush of pain lasted long enough for a snuffling sound to break through the rushing of blood in her ears. Tired eyes rolled to her left and lit upon the source of the breathing.

    A wolf. Just her luck, too. Already dying alone in the snow on the side of some godforsaken mountain in some godforsaken corner of Montana, and a wolf rocked up. Rachel would have laughed if she’d had breath in her lungs and wasn’t scared of being eaten alive. Even if she was half-dead. The beast nosed through the patches of blood that were the trail she had taken to where she fell, half propped up against a tree. Its muzzle came away red.

    It didn’t seem to care that it stood on her leg when it finally approached and Rachel certainly wasn’t about to risk its ire in pushing it off. Would it have even mattered? she wondered idly, trying not to gag on the scent of its breath when it shoved its face into her own. Maybe it would wait around to eat her until after she bled to death, or maybe it wouldn’t. There was nothing she could do about it now; though she had somehow, miraculously, managed to keep hold of her rifle on her panicked flight through the woods, she didn’t have the strength to hold it.

    Resigned to her fate, Rachel could only huff out a shallow breath when the wolf turned on its heel and trotted back into the forest. She would much rather die in peace, and it looked like the universe would give her that small mercy at least.

    Awareness came and went in waves, and her concept of time with it. Birds chirped, the watery winter sun peeked out from behind the clouds, a little bit lower each time. A man came, took her hands between his and tried to rub warmth back into her fingers. He rumbled at her; a question, probably. Rachel stared blank-eyed at the wolf. It was back, her blood still smeared on its snout where it sat quietly on its haunches. The man rumbled again, slapped her cheek. She stared at him, it was all she could do. It seemed that was response enough for him, because he hauled her over his shoulders and grunted when his knees cracked as he stood. Pain blossomed anew in her chest and Rachel cried with every step her savior took.

    The man traced soothing circles on the back of her thigh, comforting her like an injured animal he was worried would lash out. She couldn’t put voice to the words rattling in her head, the questions she had for him.  _How did you find me, why are you helping me, where are you taking me_. So she rested her head against his shoulder where it flexed beneath her as he walked and let the rocking motion coax her at last into blessed unconsciousness. 


	2. Winter Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are bad, but they could be worse.

     When Rachel woke, it was to a dark and quiet room, the stillness broken only by the sound of soft breathing and the remains of a fire settling in a hearth. Weak moonlight filtered in the windows and by its pale illumination she sat up as slowly and gingerly as she could manage with one arm immobilized in a sling across her chest. There was someone else in the narrow bed with her, the deep breathing of sleep somehow reassuring against the disorientation muddling her brain. Rachel, in a fit of _something,_  reached out a hand, laid it on the man’s back.

     This was real, then; she probably wasn’t dead after all. Muscle shifted beneath skin as he breathed slowly and evenly. Rachel hadn’t realized how close she was to hyperventilating, how fast her heart was beating, until that small point of contact between her and the stranger snapped everything back into focus. As much focus as her muzzy mind could manage; something about the way her flesh itched under her skin and her mouth was as dry as a desert told her that she had been given a painkiller at some point, and a strong one. She resisted the urge to scratch at herself and relieve the all-consuming itch.

     There was a more pressing need, though. Her bladder cried out for relief, though Rachel balked when she noticed there was only one door in the tiny cabin. No indoor plumbing, then. She grit her teeth and began the excruciating process of sliding out of bed. Every muscle trembled with the exertion and by the time she had wriggled down to the foot of the bed she was dripping sweat and swallowing back the bile that threatened to come forth. Her silent companion couldn’t have made it any more difficult for her, putting himself between her and the door, and boxing her in against the wall.

     Stubborn pride and more than a little urgency forced her aching body across the few feet to the door. A jacket, thick and warm, hung on a peg above a single pair of boots. All, she guessed, belonging to her host. Rachel suspected the long johns she was swimming in also belonged to him, along with the thick socks that were currently keeping her toes very warm indeed. A quick glance back (the man was still sleeping, and had rolled onto his back in the middle of the bed) as she struggled one-armed into the jacket and stepped into the too-large boots, and Rachel slipped out into the night.

     The cold of it snatched the breath from her lungs and bit into her bones immediately. She coughed violently, once, then twice. Spotted the unmistakable shape of a privy set into the trees, and made a beeline for it. A few steps off the porch and Rachel regretted not waking the man. If she had ached before in the warmth of the cabin, the pain was near crippling now. Something was wrong with her feet, pain sending bolts of searing lightning up her legs with every step, but there was no turning back now. It would be less painful to finish what she set out to do, than to turn around now.

     She told herself that every step of the way, slow and unsteady as they were. The privy was no warmer than the open forest, but at least the biting wind was mostly blocked. It was very difficult, Rachel found, to drop trou in the middle of a cold snap with two bullet wounds, only one functioning arm, and a hand covered in bandages. She managed it, somehow, through several minutes of fumbling and half-sobbed curses. It took nearly twice as long to get the long johns back up again. By the time Rachel shuffled out of the privy, tears were running down her cheeks and freezing in her lashes. If every breath she took hadn’t sent spasms of pain shooting through her ribs, she might even have been sobbing.

     That was how her host found her as she shuffled slowly back to the cabin. She looked up to see how far she had yet to go, and there he was, standing in front of her. She gasped and the gasp turned into a hacking cough. He said nothing while Rachel got her breath back, standing there in the snow with mist blowing from his mouth and frosting in his beard.

     “The hell’re you doing out here?” he asked, moving forward to take her good elbow and hustle her back into the cabin.

     “Had to pee,” Rachel replied, her voice a quiet rasp.

     “ _Had to pee_ ,” he repeated under his breath, shaking his head. His hair, messy from sleep, caught a beam of light from the window and Rachel realized it was red. A tiny smile tugged at one corner of her mouth, but the smile turned into a grimace when, apparently, she wasn’t moving fast enough for him. Without so much as a word of warning, he swept her legs out from under her and hauled her bodily back into the cabin.

     Rachel didn’t breathe again until he set her down none too gently in a chair before the fire, and when she did finally it was slumped forward with her hand fisted white-knuckled in the collar of his shirt where she had gripped it tight in the sudden, agonizing movement. She was clammy and nauseated again, her pursed lips a thin line against the ashen cast of her face. The man seemed to realize how badly she was hurting and how rough he had been, because his hand was gentle when it covered hers, coaxing her to loosen her grip and sit back in the chair. It was as much of an apology as he would give, and the pain did lessen some when she wasn’t hunched over anymore.

     When he was sure she was in no danger of keeling over in her seat, he moved his attention to the fire. Silence between them reigned as Rachel struggled to get her breathing back together and he poked the fire back to life. Cheery crackling and flickering shadows filled the space when he dragged a foot stool over and sat it in front of her.

     “I’m Rachel,” she supplied, finally breaking the silence.

     “Jacob,” he replied. He didn’t quite smile, but the corners of his mouth pulled up a little in a ghost of the expression. “How’re you feeling?”

     Rachel laughed, and grimaced immediately at the flash of pain. “Been better. Could be worse, though. Could be a popsicle. Thanks for pulling me out of the snow. And patching me up.”

     “Sure. What happened to you?”

     She shifted slightly in her seat, shrugged her shoulder out of the jacket she still wore and tried to free her arm from the other. Jacob (the name suited him, she decided, in some intangible way) leaned forward and helped her out of it, tossing it onto the tiny table squeezed between the fireplace and the kitchen sink. Rachel murmured her thanks, more comfortable now that she wasn’t sweating in a parka anymore. Jacob looked at her expectantly, his brilliantly blue eyes glinting in the light of the fire.

     “I’m an architectural surveyor, contracting for a title abstractor in Fall’s End. I was out with my colleague assessing a structure, and I guess the landowner didn’t tell the tenant we would be there. He didn’t much like that,” Jacob’s raised eyebrow drew a crooked smile out of Rachel as she continued, “And ran us off the property. He shot at us a couple times. I don’t know if he hit Kim at all, it seemed like he was mostly aiming for me. Hey, did you grab my jacket, it had my cell--”

     “Rachel.” Jacob’s voice was quiet, but stilled her immediately. She had been craning around in the chair, trying desperately to see if her jacket was hanging up somewhere else, but his hands coming to rest on her knees snapped her attention back to him. He didn’t move, just let them lay there, anchoring her and pulling her out of the panic that had been building in her throat.

     “You were bleeding and hypothermic and barely conscious. I didn’t have time to grab anything but you.”

     Rachel’s hand, the one that wasn’t strapped down to immobilize her arm, was shaking in her lap. Jacob took it in both of his, turning it over and untying the knotted bandage Rachel had been doing her best to ignore. He stared at her as he unwrapped the gauze and she found that she couldn’t break the eye contact. The gauze fell away and Rachel’s breath stuttered. The pinky of her left hand was missing at the second knuckle and the middle finger had been removed at the first. The skin was raw and puckered, a contrast to the neat stitches holding what was left of her fingers together. Jacob reached down and lifted first one foot into his lap, then the other, pulling off boots and socks to reveal more gauze.

     “You’re lucky you’re still alive.”

     She didn’t cry. She sat silently staring at her mangled flesh and trying to process it. Of _course_ frostbite would have happened. She was laying in the snow for who knew how long, extremities exposed and vulnerable. She should be glad she hadn’t lost any cartilage, or her trigger finger. Relearning how to write would have been a pain. Brown eyes flickered up to meet blue and Rachel offered a smile that didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes.

     “How bad is it?”

     Jacob grunted and scratched at his beard. “I’m not a doctor, I can’t say for sure. The bullet that hit your shoulder tore up some major blood vessels. That’s why the frostbite was worse on that hand, I think.

     “Could be nerve damage, too, but it’s too early to tell.” As he spoke, he leaned forward into her personal space again, this time freeing her confined arm from its sling and pressing down on her exposed fingernail, watching the way it blanched under the pressure. The damage _was_ worse on her right hand; only her thumb was still intact and the pinky was gone entirely. The remaining three fingers were all missing at the tip.

     “And the second bullet?” she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from where Jacob folded her hands together in her lap and covered them with his own.

     “Broke a couple ribs, punctured the diaphragm, partially collapsed the lung. You had an infection for over a week; I was starting to think my new roommate would be silent as the grave for the rest of the winter.” It was a poor attempt at a joke, but the offense of it was enough to break Rachel’s empty stare and fix the man with a wholly unimpressed look. One corner of his mouth twitched up, hidden almost completely by his beard. If they’d been sitting farther apart, Rachel would have missed the expression entirely.

     She missed the warmth of his hands when he stood to sort through the small army of pill bottles taking up half the table. He returned with a glass of water (filled from the _very_ old school hand pump that served as a faucet) and a handful of pills in varying sizes.

     “Not a doctor, huh?” Rachel accepted the pills with only a small amount of fumbling. She didn’t drop any, which, considering the state of her hands, was a minor miracle. “What’re all these, then?”

     “Antibiotics. Hydromorphone for the pain.”

     “No opiates.”

     Jacob sighed and stared hard at her. “Rachel, I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you’re going to be screaming and crying in about an hour if you don’t take that pill. Now’s not the time to be brave--”

     “I’m allergic to morphine,” Rachel interrupted. It was almost funny, the way his mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “Not badly, but I’m so itchy right now that I could scratch my skin inside out and still feel like I’m covered in the hairiest wool sweater that ever existed.”

     “No opiates," he echoed, reaching to replace the offending pill with a different one. “Diclofenac is the best I’ve got.”

     “It’ll have to do. Um-- can you--,” Rachel gestured helplessly at the glass he held in his outstretched hand. “I’m afraid I’ll drop it.”

     The profound embarrassment Rachel felt when Jacob gently brushed a strand of hair away from her face and held the glass to her lips was eclipsed only by a feeling she couldn’t put words to, but hit her like a punch in the gut. As he held the glass steady for her to drink her fill, she could have kicked herself. Here, sitting so close together, Rachel realized he was older than she first thought, the firelight dancing across the lines and valleys of a face that had seen Hell and come out the other side. If he noticed her staring, he didn’t say so.

     She didn’t notice his other hand had come to cradle the back of her neck until his thumb brushed lightly across the delicate skin behind her ear. She shuddered slightly, and blamed it on a twinge of pain in her ribs and the waning effects of the medication.

     The glass returned to its place on the sideboard, when Jacob returned to her he didn’t take his place on the ottoman again. Instead, he stood in front of her, arms crossed over his chest.

     “You should get back in bed,” he said, offering a hand to help her stand. “Think you can walk?”

     Rachel took his hand. When the process of standing left her sweating and on the verge of tears again, he made the decision for her. He wrapped her good arm around his neck, stooped, and hoisted her up by the backs of her thighs. The position was borderline indecent and absolutely suggestive of lewd acts, but, Rachel had to admit, with her legs wrapped around his waist there was no pressure on her wounds. The walk to the bed, where he carefully set her down again, was much more pleasant than when he had swept her in from the cold.

     Determined to do at least _something_ without his help, appreciated though it was, she maneuvered herself back to the side of the bed she had woken on. As Jacob stripped off his sodden socks, she realized he must have gone out into the night with no boots on, just to find her. That odd, unnameable feeling was back, but this time it felt a little less like disappointment and a little more like growing fondness.

     He caught the slight pinch of her eyebrows when he turned and slid his legs under the heavy quilts. He asked, “What?”

     Caught off-guard, Rachel scrambled for an answer better than _I’m glad it was you who found me_. “I-- feel bad, taking up space in your bed.”

     “Rachel, my _dogs_ are bigger than you. You’re fine.”

     She scoffed, and if it wouldn’t have hurt her, would have hurled a pillow at him. Just because he happened to be almost a foot taller than her and had saved her from certain death didn’t mean she had to put up with his sass. She settled instead for studiously ignoring him (and that stupid, self-satisfied smirk he wore) and creating a nest of pillows to cradle her bad side. Teasing aside, Jacob helped her wedge one pillow under her shoulder and another under her hip, before settling in himself.

     He rolled into the same position she had woken to find him in, on his side with his back to her, facing the door and the rest of the room. Rachel wondered at that, but put it on a list of things to think about tomorrow. Exhaustion was finally catching up with her, even though it felt like she’d slept for a year already. One nagging thing in the back of her mind refused to rest, though.

     “Jacob?” she murmured.

     He grunted.

     “What did you mean earlier? ‘The rest of the winter’?”

     He sighed, heavily. “There was a blizzard the night I found you. We’re snowed in until spring.”

     Rachel didn’t cry, even though tears threatened. It was a scary thought, being trapped alone with a man she didn’t know for the next six or seven months. Horror movies featuring similar scenarios played out in her dreams, the damsel either ending up brutally murdered or horrifically scarred at the end. Well, she was already maimed at Jacob’s hands, in a way, but the events that had lead to her injuries were certainly not under either person’s control. It was a small comfort.

     But when she woke up again, hours later, in the cold dark that preceded dawn, she did. They had both shifted slightly in their sleep, Rachel and Jacob, and she had woken to find her forehead pressed against the back of his warm shoulder, her good hand on his waist where she had first touched him. What it was that had woken her, she couldn’t say, but in that achingly lonely time of the night she didn’t bother trying to stop the tears that flowed from her eyes and wet the soft shirt Jacob had worn to bed.

     Jacob, for his part, stayed silent and still when he realized his nightmare had woken the woman sharing his bed. The weight of her at his back was now far from the threatening presence it had been when he first woke, slight though the dip in the mattress was. The two points of contact between them, now strangely comforting anchors. He didn’t even realize she was crying until his shirt stuck oddly to his skin when he breathed. Jacob thought to comfort her somehow, to maybe roll over and gather her into his arms, but he suspected that would only embarrass them both. Better to feign sleep until she tired herself out and drifted off again.

     He, however, would be getting no more sleep that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playing fast and loose with how frostbite works in this one. It's not pretty and is generally much, much worse than I've depicted here. Rachel is indeed lucky that she didn't lose an ear or her nose, along with what's left of her fingers and toes.
> 
> No update next weekend; I'll be out camping in the wilds of Manitoba.


	3. Quiet Breathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding the erotic in the domestic.

     The next week saw Rachel spending more and more time awake as she recovered from the infection that had taken root in her lung. In the grand scheme of things, it had been a mild infection, but the danger had come in its location. She still struggled to breathe and there was still a worrying crackle when Jacob pressed his ear to her chest, but he made sure she took the antibiotics he doled out to her and hoped (maybe even prayed) for the best.

     The day after her ill-advised solo adventure to the privy, Rachel asked him when they’d be getting out of there. If he was surprised at her anger when he told her they couldn’t leave until snowmelt in the spring and that they were well out of radio and cell signal and couldn’t call for help, he didn’t show it. He let her scream at him, as much as she was able, and said nothing when she collapsed, breathless, against the door. Frustrated tears pricked at her eyes. She couldn’t even bend over properly to tie Jacob’s much-too-large boots so she could hike herself out of that godforsaken cabin.

     Rachel stared at Jacob where he sat at the kitchen table, watching her with no expression on his face. Her need to get out and get home was fueled mostly by wanting to let her friends and family know she was still alive, but behind all that was a certain amount of fear of her host. He was a hard man to read, and for all his seemingly endless patience (getting and fetching, helping her to the privy, even braiding her hair when she got sick of it being in her face) there was a side of him that Rachel wasn’t sure she wanted to see. It was the side that woke him up in the middle of the night, sweating and breathing hard. He always checked to see if she was awake (she always pretended to still be sleeping), then slid out of bed and disappeared into the night. To do what, she never really knew.

     Her head thumped against the door. It had been a rash idea, this decision of hers to simply walk down the valley herself. She would have been dead in a matter of hours. Rachel stared at the rough timbers of the ceiling and tried to breathe normally again.

     “You done?”

     “Yeah,” she replied. Her head rolled to the side and her eyes met his again. “Sorry I’m so difficult.”

     “Can’t say I blame you. It’s a shit situation. Stuck in cramped quarters with a stranger for who knows how long, after a traumatic event. You’re itching to get back to your support network, and there’s nothing wrong that. Just don’t bite my head off like that again.”

     Shame burned in Rachel’s cheeks. He was right, of course. She had lashed out at him for something he had no control over. Abuelo would have been so disappointed. She nodded, mostly to herself. Winters were long in the mountains; if they were to get through the next six months without completely losing it, they had to get along. She nodded again, resolutely this time. Maybe they’d wind up friends by the end of it, but Rachel would settle for not enemies.

     Days after her outburst, Rachel woke from an afternoon nap to Jacob dragging a heavy wooden tub through the door. In her half-awake state she watched him wrestle it onto the flagstones, staring without realizing it at the way his muscles moved in concert underneath his shirt. He straightened from the task in time to see her tongue dart out to wet her lips. _Interesting_. He tucked that observation away to think on later and started setting pots of water on the old wood-burning stove to heat.

     Surreptitiously, Rachel sniffed at her borrowed shirt. And hid a grimace. She didn’t know how Jacob could stand to be in the same room as her, let alone be so near as he always was. Apparently even the sharp smell of stale sweat and lingering sickness wasn’t enough for him to obey normal people rules about personal space, because he always within arm’s reach of her. It was off-putting at first, but the more time Rachel spent around him (which was all the time; they even shared a double bed) the less it bothered her. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn’t, but she found it reassuring that she only had to stretch out a hand and he would be right there. There was something grounding about it, a comforting presence when she started panicking at the thought of being stuck inside such a small space for so long.

     He always seemed to know when she got too far into her own head. He would rest a hand on her shoulder, ask if she wanted a glass of water since he was already getting one for himself. He never made it obvious that he was snapping her out of whatever dark hole her mind had started wandering down, and Rachel appreciated that. She felt weak enough as it was, needing his help to even get from the couch to the bed, to say nothing of venturing out to relieve herself. At least he had found an old jacket for her and a worn out pair of boots in a cardboard box stuffed in the rafters.

     Rachel dozed, warm in her cocoon of blankets on the couch. Water splashing into the tub roused her only slightly and with tired eyes only half open she watched the spectacle in front of her without fully recognizing it for what it was. Jacob, stripped down and naked as the day he was born, taking a bath. The part of her mind that still drifted on the borders of sleep was entirely too amused by how very _Little House on the Prairie_ the whole situation was. A cabin with no electricity and no indoor plumbing, and them snowed in for the winter with only what meat Jacob could hunt for them and what preserves there were in the root cellar to eat.

     The part of her mind that was marginally more conscious fully appreciated the view before her. They’d seen each other naked before; it was all but impossible to avoid in a one-room cabin, and there was the simple fact that he had taken care of her through the worst of her illness when she was insensate more often than not. There was never anything sexual in it. Just two people existing in close quarters. But this… was not that. This was erotic in such a blandly domestic way that Rachel was, frankly, surprised at herself. He was an undeniably attractive man, even past 40. She had felt for herself the strength of his body, the power in his arms as he carried her to and from their bed.

     (When had she started thinking of it as _their_ bed?)

     Jacob was as efficient in bathing as he was in all things. Before the water had even stopped steaming, he was standing again. When he turned to pull his towel off the back of the chair, his eyes caught Rachel’s. She was shameless in the way she watched the water run down his body, catching the bright afternoon sunlight as it streamed in the windows. Her eyes wandered, taking in every scar and crevasse that decorated a body that had seen Hell on earth and come out the other side mostly intact. He stood, towel in hand, and watched her watching him.

     He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the way her pupils dilated and that little pink tongue of hers darted out to wet her lips again.

     When their eyes finally met, Rachel was brazen about it. She’d been caught checking him out, and really, who could blame her? Her lips parted ever so slightly, tongue caught between her teeth. It was a moment of _change_ in whatever their relationship was. She watched him, watching her, and Rachel decided that the winter would be a lot more pleasant for both of them if they did more than just _share_ the bed.

     It was almost a shame when he dried himself off quickly, but instead of getting dressed again he tied the towel around his waist and stalked over to the couch. Rachel’s breath stuttered. He looked every inch a predator and she wasn’t too proud to admit that it excited her.

     “Get up.”

 _Yes, sir,_ replied that little voice in the back of her mind that had gotten her into all kinds of trouble before. It looked an awful lot like it was leading her into trouble again, but Rachel wasn’t inclined to care. She stood, carefully, extricating herself from the blanket he had draped over her when she fell asleep hours ago, and stared up at him through her lashes. He was standing in her personal space, as usual, close enough to feel the heat from his bath-warmed skin radiating outward. Rachel felt sure that if she just breathed deeply enough, her breasts would brush against his chest, only the thin shirt she wore separating them.

     Her breath came in shallow puffs, hitched when his hands came up to play with the hem of her shirt. The shirt that was actually his, that hung to her thighs, that she had to roll up the sleeves on so it didn’t hang past her knuckles. The shirt she was wearing nothing beneath on account of all her clothes needing to be thrown out because of the bloodstains. He wasn’t even all _that_ much taller than her, but he was definitely a big man with a big presence. He seemed to be mulling something over while their silent eye contact remained unbroken. His breath rasped in the quiet, a counterpoint to the stubborn wheeze in her own lungs.

     Whatever answer he had been searching for in her liquid brown eyes, he had apparently found.

     When Jacob lifted the hem of her shirt, he moved slowly, as if waiting for a word of protest. Rachel had none for him. She was utterly transfixed. There was nothing different in this action than there was in any of the other times he had helped her in and out of a shirt, but there was also _everything_ different in it. For starters, he had never been mostly naked before and flushed from the hot water. And she hadn’t had an ache between her thighs that cried out for satisfaction.

     Rachel stood before him, as naked as she had ever been. It was exhilarating. There was something of a challenge in Jacob’s eyes when he took her elbows in his calloused hands and guided her to the tub. It was a dance between them, seeing who would give in to the electricity between them first. Rachel was determined it would not be her, but her host was more alluring than he had any right to be.

     He helped her into the tub with one hand on her back and the other holding her fingers lightly when she wobbled and clutched at him for support. Rachel sank into the water with a groan that went straight to Jacob’s groin. _Two could play that game_ , he decided and opened his mouth to say such, until he noticed the abrupt change in Rachel’s demeanor.

     She had been relaxed before, hazy from her nap and glowing with the slow embers of arousal, but now she was stiff as a board and staring at _something_. Jacob followed her gaze, to where her right hand rested on the edge of the tub. Her right hand, with its missing fingers and the angry red of healing frostbite. If there was anything that would kill a mood stone dead, it was a fresh trauma.

     “Hey.” Jacob’s voice was gruff, but not unkind, and his hand was an anchor where he rested it on the back of her neck. “You’re okay.”

     Rachel nodded, not really listening. Her physical wounds were healing, yes, but the emotional wounds were still raw and weeping. Jacob never really said anything when she woke shaking and on the verge of panic, but he was very good at bringing her mind back to the present. Reaching his hand back to rest it on her hip when she was pressed trembling against his back in the middle of the night, handing her a cup of coffee when she sat bolt upright on the couch and bit back her pained whimpers. Rachel suspected he had his own demons of a similar nature to wrestle with.

     His fingers tightened briefly and then the contact was gone. Rachel missed it, but certainly didn’t complain when Jacob came back with a fresh pot of hot water to warm the cooling bath. She still couldn’t raise her right arm much higher than a few inches, and so had to suffer through the indignity of him washing her hair for her like a child.

     She hardly noticed, so caught up in her own head was she. She allowed him to move her head this way and that with no resistance, staring somewhere into the fire as he poured cup after cup of water over her head to rinse the soap from her hair. The water did little to hide the silent tears that prickled the corners of her eyes. Rachel was angry and frustrated. She felt weak for being totally reliant on another’s kindness for her survival. She could hardly put on a shirt without help, let alone wash her own damn hair, and it pissed her right off.

     Jacob watched all those thoughts run through her mind and recognized them as thoughts he had once had himself. Oh, they weren’t identical, but they were too similar to be ignored. One day she would see that sometimes it was worth protecting a weaker member of the group to improve the strength of the whole. _Yes_ , he thought to himself, _she will come out of this stronger for it._ But first, he had to mold her into the woman he knew she could be and that would take different tactics than those he usually employed. He’d have to take a few pages out of Joseph’s book for that.

     Phase One was already underway, but he saw an opportunity to move it along further and took it.

     When all the soap was washed from her dark hair and she sat with her good arm wrapped around her knees in the now lukewarm water, Jacob ditched the towel he had wrapped around his waist and slid into the tub behind her. Rachel seemed confused when the sudden presence of _legs_ on either side of her and a very manly chest at her back broke through the haze of her dissocciative spell. She sat rigid at first when his arms wrapped around her and coaxed her to lean back against him.

     The stiffness bled from her when his lips met her neck where his hand so often rested.

     “You’re okay,” he repeated. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to the regular posting schedule!


	4. An Interlude (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Earl Whitehorse does his best, but sometimes that's not enough.

     Earl Whitehorse was not a young man anymore. Hadn’t been for some time, if the rumors were to be believed.  _An old soul_ , people had called him (starting with his mother, when he was six.) He’d never  _really_  wanted to be sheriff either, it had kinda just happened one day.  The worst of what he had to deal with on most days was hunting accidents. An accidental shooting here and there because someone wasn’t wearing blaze orange or a greenhorn with the ink still wet on their safety certification panicked and shot at a bear that wasn’t actually there. 

     As soon as Kimberly Kulevsky burst through the office doors screaming about an angry tenant with a gun who had shot her boss, Earl knew this was going to be a long few months. Snow was already falling and the weather service was predicting almost two feet of new accumulation. Ms. Kulevsky was well on her way to sobbing when he told her there was no way they’d send out a search part until the storm had blown over. 

     (Pratt and Hudson, as dedicated as they were to their jobs, had not looked eager to head out into the coming night and the coming storm.) 

     Kimberly was angry, but realistic. She was born and raised in the Valley, she knew how terrible fall storms could be. She also knew that there was very little chance of finding Rachel alive. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents that, though, when she called them that night. 

      _Rachel was in an accident_ , she said. The words sounded flat to her ears.  _We’re doing everything we can to find her. No, no, Mr. Salazar, don’t come out– we’ll be snowed in for a couple days. Yes, I’ll let you know as soon as we get out to start looking._

     Kimberly had not signed up for  _this_  when she signed on as Rachel’s partner. Neither of them had ever expected anyone to actually open fire on them, either, though. So Kimberly was left waving off Sheriff Whitehorse when he offered to call Rachel’s family. It would be better coming from her, easier maybe. Better for Rachel’s parents, but harder for Kimberly. It’s hard to explain that someone’s kid is missing and presumed dead when your Spanish is only at a seventh grade level. 

     (Harley takes over somewhere in the middle of the conversation. She puts Kimberly on speaker and interprets for her. And doesn’t say anything about how they’re all crying by the end of it.) 

     It took weeks of searching in vain before the hounds finally picked up a trail in the frozen forest. The patches of blood visible where the new snow didn’t quite drift over it were worryingly large, and then the call went up. A body, curled under a tree and covered in four feet of powder. No wonder it took them so long to find her. 

     What was left of her  _to_  find. 

     The wolves got hungry when the snows came early, and had taken their fill. 

     Earl Whitehorse disliked this part of the job most. To guide grieving parents into what passed as a coroner’s office in remote Montana, and ask them to identify their child’s remains. What was left of her. 

     It always came back to that odd detail. Gruesome as it was to think on, something didn’t quite fit. Rachel’s extremities weren’t distributed in a scatter across the landscape. There wasn’t quite enough blood (that, at least, could be explained away by her corpse already being frozen when the wolves got to her.) Something was off about the whole scene, but Mister and Missus Salazar both agreed that the body was their eldest daughter’s. 

     They took her home to be buried in El Salvador, and that was the end of that. The tenant who had killed her would be prosecuted. The judge anticipated it being an open and shut case. Manslaughter, not murder, and Castle Doctrine was sure to be cited even though Rachel had not reached for her weapon, but for the bag sitting near it. 

     Rachel could no longer tell her story, though, and so it fell to Kimberly to speak for her. Kimberly would do everything in her power to make sure Allen Fray went away for a very, very long time.

     Sheriff Whitehorse dedicated Rachel’s file to a drawer that was only opened but once a year. Cases that had been solved, but still nagged at the back of his mind; they were cold cases, but  _weren’t_.  

     Four years later, when he goes to serve that ill-fated warrant on Joseph Seed, he could have sworn he was having another heart attack. 

     There she was, whole (mostly), with one kid hiding behind her and another one in her belly. He was  _right._  After all that time, he was right. How she had ended up with the cult was a mystery, along with why she hadn’t tried to make contact or how no one had managed to let slip that she was there. Earl was willing to bet it had everything to do with Jacob Seed, putting himself square between woman and child, and the rest of the room. 

     He was also willing to bet it had everything to do with the matching wedding rings shining on the chain around his neck, hanging beside his dogtags. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, check out Rachel's blog for more snippets like this and chapters posted ahead of time. Also spoilers for where things are going, kinda. If you're into that sort of thing.


	5. Sunday Kind of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That couch will never be the same, and neither will they.

     Rachel got the distinct feeling that Jacob was only humoring her legs stretched across his lap where they both lounged on the couch, reading in front of the fire. It was mostly the way his hand had clasped her ankle in a vice-like grip when her idle tapping at the air got to be too much that clued her in. Rachel was frustrated, and it manifested in small bouts of manic energy. Which apparently bugged Jacob, even though her roommate, housemate, _whatever_ , didn’t say anything about it. Only rubbed small circles over the bones in her ankle with the rough pad of his thumb.

     That was another source of frustration, though less immediately pressing than the cabin fever that was setting in already.

     They had danced around each other for two days after whatever it was had almost happened the day Jacob washed her hair. There had been nothing sexy about the meltdown she had in the tub, held tight in Jacob’s arms while she tried not to sob. Not because she was too proud to be vulnerable around a stranger, but because the hiccups that came with her distress were sure to aggravate her wounds.

     But when they would stand next to each other while washing the dishes (Rachel drying, so her sutures wouldn’t get wet), or when they sat across the tiny dining table and drank their morning coffee in silence, _something_ unspoken hung between them. The same something that sent a spark up her spine when Jacob’s thumb brushed over a patch of skin on her ankle she had no idea could even _be_ that sensitive, especially through a pair of thick woolen socks. What was even better was how he didn’t seem to give a single shit about the fact that she hadn’t shaved her legs in almost a month.

     Rachel had told herself she wouldn’t be the first to cave to whatever was between them, but with nowhere to rub one out in private, something had to give. Rachel tucked her bookmark between the pages and closed it with a snap. Jacob looked up and she met his eyes defiantly.

     “Are you _ever_ going to make a move?”

     One ginger eyebrow crept slowly up his forehead. “Make a move on what?”

     Either he was being deliberately obtuse, or he really was that clueless. She doubted it was the latter. With a surprising amount of grace for someone who had been shot only two weeks prior, Rachel extricated herself from Jacob’s hold, planted her knees firmly on either side of his hips, and settled into his lap. With maybe a deliberate twist of her hips until she found a comfortable position that didn’t put too much strain on her knees.

     If he had only been half paying attention before, he was very much paying attention now. His own book had been discarded sometime in her maneuver, laying spine-up on the floor. His hands rested on her hips, his face turned up to hers. She quirked an eyebrow of her own and scratched her nails lightly across the back of his scalp.

     “Oh,” he said. That damn smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth. There was no way he didn’t know how attractive that was. “I was planning on waiting until you’d healed more, but if the lady insists--”

     “She does.”

     Jacob never thought it would be so convenient that Rachel never wore underwear beneath his shirts even though he’d given her a clean pair of boxers. There was something to be said for _ease of access_ , though, when he pushed up the hem of the shirt and was met only with the bare expanse of her rump. It was as pert as he had dreamed it was just that morning, before he woke with a particular problem and had to almost hobble outside for a little personal time before Rachel woke up.

     When their lips met, Rachel realized two things. The first was easily dismissed; she had no condoms, but as long as he was clean that wasn’t an issue. Thank god for the NuvaRing. The second was not so easily dismissed, and was actually almost hilarious: Jacob was not a good kisser. He wasn’t bad by any means, just. Uninspired. Oh, well. She could think of a few ways to teach him how to put that mouth to better use. None of which were in the cards that night. She was entirely too impatient for that.

     Rachel slid her good hand between them, palmed Jacob through his jeans. _He’s Goldilocks,_ that inappropriate voice piped up in the back of her head. _Not too big, not too small._ Had Rachel been alone and not about to get fucked for the first time in months, she would have scoffed at herself. Instead, that scoff turned into a breathy gasp when Jacob’s hands crept up under her shirt and teased at her breasts.

     Okay, so he was better with his hands than his mouth. She could work with that, especially when his callouses dragged deliciously against her skin and one hand dipped down to the apex of her thighs. Rachel all but quivered in his grasp when his darkened gaze met hers, asking silent permission. She nodded, and bit back a yelp when one of his thick fingers pressed her open. She wasn’t wet enough to take his cock yet, but that could be easily remedied, especially when he crooked his finger like _that_ and Rachel ground herself wantonly down onto his palm.

     He _smirked_ again, the asshole, and flicked his thumb against her clit. If he wanted to play dirty, well, two could play that game. When Jacob slipped a second and third finger inside her, Rachel clenched her walls around him. His eyes darkened and Rachel grinned.

     Enough was enough. There would be time for coy flirting another day; what she wanted, _needed_ , in that moment was to feel him inside her. When she pushed his hand away (and tried not to whine at the loss of stimulation) he made a show of bringing his fingers to his mouth and licking them clean. If Rachel was a woman of lesser self-control, she might have growled. Instead, she pressed her mouth to his and fumbled for his belt and the fly on his jeans.

     The man really wasn’t fair, Rachel decided when he lifted his hips with her still sitting on him. The way his thighs flexed underneath her? Should be illegal. No one should be allowed to do that _and_ pull their trousers and underwear down at the same time, all while not breaking a kiss. Then he had to go and _growl_ at her like that when she finally had his cock in her hand, and she gave it a few lazy strokes. His fingers dug into her hips almost painfully, but did nothing to direct her movement.

     It was almost heart-warming, the way Jacob let Rachel set the pace of their dalliance. _She_ initiated, _she_ did away with the layers separating their bodies, _she_ slowly sank onto his cock and sighed when their hips finally met again. Jacob was almost shaking where his hands had drifted to come to rest on her waist and he practically groaned when she clenched around him.

     Rachel took his face in her mangled hands, tilted it up from where he had found the exposed skin at her collar bone and started scraping it with his teeth. Their eyes met and Rachel captured his lips again with her own when she raised her hips and sank back down.

     If their situation had been a fairy tale, this was where Rachel’s inner monologue would have waxed poetic about how their bodies were made for each other, their every touch searing and passionate. The reality of it was that neither of them had had sex in a very long time, and their touches tended more toward desperate fumbling and clacking teeth as they moved together in a desperate rhythm.

     There was nothing graceful about the way Rachel rocked in Jacob’s lap or the way his thumb found her clit and rubbed circles that were almost painful, but they had to have been doing something right. Rachel was not given to histrionics in the bedroom (or the living room, as the case may be; but in a one-room cabin was there really any difference?), but Jacob’s blunt nails digging into her and the punishing pace he set from below had her almost screaming into the quiet afternoon. Even her wounds were a dull background ache to the fire that coiled in the pit of her belly. Rachel’s breath came faster now, short pants that had her clenching ever tighter around Jacob where their bodies were joined. If the tendons standing out in his neck were any indication, he was just as close to the edge.

     In the end, it was Rachel who came first. She tilted her hips back and the delicious curve of Jacob’s cock dragged against just the right spot in her cunt, and that was that. She might have screamed, if she hadn’t leaned forward and dug her teeth into Jacob’s shoulder as she fell to pieces. Jacob followed soon after, his hips jerking erratically as he tried to keep a solid grip on the quivering woman in his lap.

     Only the crackling fire accompanied the sound of their breathing as they both came down from their highs. As endorphins faded, new aches made themselves known. Rachel’s knees screamed, though not as loudly as her broken ribs and the stumps of her fingers where they had taken up handfuls of Jacob’s shirt. Jacob’s shoulder throbbed where Rachel had sunk her teeth in, and he was grateful for the sturdy fabric of his flannel. He’d still have an interesting bruise, in all likelihood, though.

     Rachel was the first to move, pulling herself off of Jacob’s lap as gracefully as she could. She spared him a rakish grin over her shoulder when she all but pranced to the sink and wet a washcloth. If Jacob was a man more given to carnal desires, he would have been half hard again at the sight of his cum dripping down Rachel’s thighs as she wiped herself clean.

     Oh, who are we kidding. He absolutely was half hard again, and staring at her with such a self-satisfied smirk on his face that Rachel _threw_ the washcloth at him from across the room and huffed when it didn’t hit him in the face. Jacob, at least, knew he didn’t have another round in him so soon after the first. The eternal downside of middle-age. Instead, he cleaned himself up, tucked his cock back into his pants, and picked his book up again like nothing had ever happened.

     Still smirking the whole time, of course, while Rachel straightened her shirt and struggled to re-braid her hair where pieces had come loose from his fingers. She gave up, eventually; tossed the whole mess over her shoulder and sank back onto her side of the couch, her legs stretched across Jacob’s lap again. They had returned to the positions the beginning of the encounter had found them in, but each was still breathing a little hard, was still a little red in the cheek.

     Jacob’s hand found her ankle again, pushed down the thick wool sock to bare the delicate skin of her ankle to his idly searching fingers. There was a promise in his gaze when their eyes met again over their books, one that sent a thrill of warmth straight to Rachel’s belly. She had only a distracted smile to offer, and a quiet inhale when his hand tightened ever so slightly, dragged her leg just a little bit further into his lap.

     If Rachel didn’t know any better, she would have sworn Jacob winked at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't base this on personal experience with a man similar to Jacob in age and appearance, nope. You can't prove anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr (housesmadeofglass).


End file.
